“The Bernardi Capo we’d been supposed to meet with had made up his mind that it had all been a setup to takehimout. He was the sadistic type. So he decided he’d send a message instead of kill us outright. When I came to, I was tied to a chair, still in that suite, and the Bernardis were taking turns cutting on Sandro in a chair opposite me. Long story short, they got too interested in the fun and stopped paying attention to me. Their mistake.”
“What…happened?”
Those few minutes were among the most bloody and frenzied of my life. I didn’t like to revisit it, the person I became in those moments. “I killed them,” I said simply. “All of them. Then I picked up Sandro and I dragged him out of there, to the hospital. He could barely walk, and his face…” I trailed off. Alessandro Castellani’s face, that beautiful and proud face, had been cut open to the bone. The memory of it haunted me. I didn’t need Miller getting that picture in his head, not on top of everything else.
“They’d done a number on him,” I substituted. “He went straight into surgery, while I called his father—my Boss—and had the privilege of informing him that his son and heir might not live through the night.Andthat the Bernardis would be out for blood. And that it was all my fault.”
One detail seemed to have stuck with Miller. “What did you mean before, when you said you didn’t care about getting promoted anymore?”
“I used to be…more important in the Family than I am now. That night, Don Castellani should have killed me, but he showed mercy. He let me stay alive, but he demoted me.” Getting Sandro out of that situation alive—even though I’d been the one to cause it—had saved my skin. The Boss needed hard men in his Family, and I’d shown just how hard I was that night, cleaning up a whole Bernardi crew on my own. To him, keeping me around was worth the trouble it took to make peace with the Bernardis over The Incident. “Lately he seemed to be reconsidering. When he asked me to look into your sister’s disappearance, I thought maybe he was giving me a chance to work my way back up.”
Miller took a breath. “I’m so sorry, JJ. About everything that happened to you. To Sandro.”
“You see now what he meant that night he spoke to you, that it’s dangerous to be around me. And hell, he was right.” My words came out fast and staccato. “Maybe you should rethink all this, now that you know me better.”
Miller stroked my hair away from my face. “Iwantto know you,” he said. “All of you.” He brushed his lips against mine before he went on. “And JJ…I still want to know what happened to my sister. My father said the case is solved now, that it was a mugging gone wrong. He said they even have someone incustody. But I just don’t believe it, any of it. I never got to hash out my issues with Annie. Feels like the least I can do now is…”
I would never have given my father a World’s Greatest Dad mug, but when his Vegas rival had taken him out, I felt I owed it to him to pay the debt. So I had.
I was also willing to let Sandro take his shot at me. Even if his loverhadbeen a rat, I still owed Sandro his chance to equal the score. I wouldn’t take it lying down, but I wouldn’t run from it, either.
So I understood what Miller was saying. He felt he owed his sister something.
“When I saw the Boss today,” I told him, “he hadn’t heard the case was solved. In fact, he told me to keep looking into it. Now, maybe he hasn’t had a chance to talk to your dad about it yet, but those are still my orders as of now.”
Miller gave me a hopeful look.
“What Ishoulddo is double check with the Boss. Make sure everyone’s on the same page,” I continued. “But he’s a busy man. Wouldn’t do to keep interrupting him about this case.”
“So what are you saying?”
I rubbed his thigh. “You’re sure about this?” I asked. “You’re sure you still want to look into it?”
“Yes.”
“And…you’re sure you want to do it with me?”
He wrapped my hand in his and lifted it to his lips. “You’re the one for me, JJ.” His eyes were shining with trust.
“Then I’ll look into it until I’m told otherwise by the Boss.”
“And…after that? If your Boss tells you to stop?”
I gave a humorless smile. “According to him, I have bad judgment and I don’t know when to quit. Thing is, Trouble, he’s right. I’ll do the job until the job is done. You have my word on that.”
CHAPTER35
MILLER
Jack’s determinationfelt like a promise of things to come. I leaned in impulsively to seal the deal with a kiss, just a light press of my lips on his, my own promise right back to him. Even though I should have felt awful—and I fucking did—he had given me a parallel line of hope alongside my despair.
His story had shaken me, but not in the way he seemed to think. I could see he’d tried to do the right thing—tried to beloyal—even at the expense of his own life. I’d never seen dedication like that, not even from my own blood relatives.
His story told me I could trust this man. Trust him with my whole being.
Jack looked surprised but pleased by my kiss, and I played it off like it was just something natural, a quick, casual intimacy that we shared regularly. One day, maybe, wewouldshare it regularly. Why not? I had nothing to lose. No job, no house of my own, no life beyond entertaining douchenozzles and dickheads at pool parties. Jack had been the first person in a long time to treat me like an individual with worth beyond my acting credits or my bank account or my family connections.
He told you he wanted to cool any emotional shit until after you figure out this stuff with Annie, I reminded myself.
